smiled; then, as I stooped to taste
The sweetest cup, freak dashed it from my lip.
This very night--just think, this very night--
I planned to come and beg of you the alms
I dared not ask for in my poverty.
I thought me poor then. How stript am I now!
There's not a ragged mendicant one meets
Along the Nevski Prospekt but has leave
To tell his love, and I have not that right!
Pauline Pavlovna, why do you stand there
Stark as a statue, with no word to say?
SHE.
Because this thing has frozen up my heart.
I think that there is something killed in me,
A dream that would have mocked all other bliss.
What shall I say? What would you have me say?
HE.
If it be possible, the word of words!
SHE, VERY SLOWLY.
Well, then--I love you. I may tell you so
This once, . . . and then forever hold my peace.
We cannot stay here longer unobserved.
No--do not touch me! but stand further off,
And seem to laugh, as if we jested--eyes,
Eyes everywhere! Now turn your face away . . .
I love you.
HE.
With such music in my ears
I would death found me. It were sweet to die
Listening! You love me--prove it.
SHE.
Prove it--how?
I prove it saying it. How else?
HE.
Pauline,
I have three things to choose from; you shall choose:
This marriage, or Siberia, or France.
The first means hell; the second, purgatory;
The third--with you--were nothing less than heaven!
SHE, STARTING.
How dared you even dream it!
HE.
I was mad.
This business has touched me in the brain.
Have patience! the calamity's so new.
(Pauses.)
There is a fourth way; but that gate is shut
To brave men who hold life a thing of God.
SHE.
Yourself spoke there; the rest was not of you.
HE.
Oh, lift me to your level! So I'm safe.
What's to be done?
SHE.
There must be some path out.
Perhaps the Emperor--
HE.
Not a ray of hope!
His mind is set on this with that insistence
Which seems to seize on all match-making folk.
The fancy bites them, and they straight go mad.
SHE.
Your father's friend, the Metropolitan--
A word from him . . .
HE.
Alas, he too is bitten!
Gray-haired, gr
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